


Recall

by Davechicken



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon equivalent interrogation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:19:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6554383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren has never - well. Never interrogated someone he knew well before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThisPricklyBitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisPricklyBitch/gifts).



He’d felt his presence - or thought he had - the minute he’d landed. There were so many other voices crying out in fear and alarm that it had been difficult to know for certain. This village of Tekka’s was filled with _Jedi-sympathising scum_ and so many of them were known to him. It was **painful** to be here, to be surrounded by so many whispers of a _name_ that was not his. It grated along the inside of his mask, clawed invisible fingers through his hair, whispered cold, wet agony into his mind.

He was not _him_. He had not been _him_ in so many years. Even the name was forbidden. He was Kylo Ren. **Kylo. Ren.**

The worry, the regret, the - the - _disappointment_ he could feel was palpable as the flames in the centre of the homestead. Kylo tried to focus, grateful for his mask for keeping the _smoke-tears_ down, for hiding the **focus** he had to force into himself. The wilder got the world, the harder it became. 

Tekka did not have the map. Tekka did not have the map, and he had the name on his tongue. Kylo _could not hear it, would not hear it_  and so he struck him down. He was no longer needed, and **he could not hear that name brought back to life** , could not allow the troopers to see he had once been a _boy_ , once been _Light_. He was this, now. This creature of Darkness, of singular purpose. Anything else was a weakness, and had to be pruned free.

Tekka died, and the aching sense of _something_ linking back, reminding him… continued. It didn’t die down, didn’t become more tolerable. His hand rose, halting the screeching death headed right for his head. Behind it - at the place where it had come from - an **anger** , a horror, a disgust deeper than he could remember ever feeling. The rage of one who expected better, who felt betrayed. Kylo’s mask whipped in the direction of the blaster-fire, and the Order minions brought the _man_ forwards.

There was a minor moment of pride when the man’s eyes glued to the bolt he held, and Kylo resolved to keep holding it. The troopers threw him to his knees in front of him, before he could say a word otherwise.

That would not do. He dropped to a crouch, peering at the face. It was as familiar and not as the sense behind it, the _person_. Older, now. Much older. The simple hope of youth was tarnished in the adult, the joy and glee and expectation grown through the muck of reality, the trunk of his tree scarred by years of lean-living, or external battles. Kylo recognised him, but they - but… not here.

Poe said words, and Kylo deliberately ignored them. He looked under them, saw flickers of his attempt to hide his thoughts. He didn’t need to wade through them to know:

“The old man gave it to you.”  


Of course he had. There was no other reason for him to be here, was there? The intel had said the map was here, and now so was Poe Dameron. The map was not on the man, so:

“Search him.” He refused to acknowledge his attempts to torment him, ignoring the words and gestures. Of course he wouldn’t be cowed this easily, of course. He’d never been one to back down from anything, even when it was dangerous for him to keep going. Kylo remembered.  


“Nothing, Sir.”  


“Bring him on board.”  


***

A cynical part of Kylo wondered if the Resistance had sent Dameron on purpose. Kylo had known most of the Old Guard, who now no longer flew missions. The Rebellion as it had stood was now whittled down to shadows of their former selves. Many had died - old age, one mission too many - and he didn’t know the vast majority of the names on intel reports.

Well. First names. He knew the family names of quite a few, obviously. Such idiocy tended to run in the family, or was it simply that the poor wretches were conditioned from a young age to believing in the fight? Possibly a mixture.

But this one - this one he knew. He made enquiries with their intel department, found the scuttlebutt was that Commander Dameron was General Organa’s prized flyboy: the one considered most _daring_ (read: reckless, self-abnegating, suicidally idealistic, thrill-seeking). It could be either that, or that plus their past that had picked him for this mission. The Damerons and the Organa-Solo-Skywalkers went back before the pair of them had been born, and… well.

It made a certain amount of sense.

He let the troopers work on him, first. Nothing too serious, just in the hopes that he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

Of course not. The idiot had to hold out, even knowing he was in for more pain.

Which meant Kylo had to finish the job before the blunt tools that were Hux’s idiots shattered the shell and destroyed the pearl within.

***

He looked so small, in the chair. Strapped down, angled, held in place. A bird with clipped wings, a wild thing in a cage. It was uncomfortable to look at him like that, and not because of the minor injuries or the discomfort radiating from him. It was just - wrong.

People had their places.

Hux, in his uniform. In his boots, on his ship. On the bridge. That was where Hux lived.

Phasma, in her uniform. She lived where the fight was, unlike Hux. She lived in the battle, and was out of place elsewhere. That made sense.

Poe… Poe did not belong on a First Order ship, bound and shackled. He was outside of his sphere, his element. It was a jarring thing, a breaking of boundaries. There was _before_ , and there was **now**. Poe was a shard of _before_ , out of place. A memory recalled in anger or pain, a blurring of the distinctions he had created for himself. 

Poe was _him_. The _other-him_. **Before-him**. The name he would not utter. He did not know Kylo Ren, but Kylo Ren knew _him_.

Kylo felt the discomfort even being in the room. He could sense the gap between what Poe thought he should be, and what he was. An expectation he had never met up to (a hero, a son of heroes, a champion of the Light, a bastion of the good), but had rejected with everything he had and was. Poe looked at his mask and he knew he saw a child’s face below it, and he did not deserve to see what he looked like, now.

No one did. Kylo’s face was a travesty. Too like - too like his father and his mother. A legacy and a birthright he couldn’t shake, so he covered over and denied. He was the face he _chose_ to show the world, and that was black and ringed with death. Still, his ears burned and his nose felt too big and he remembered being _smaller_ , remembered when the boy he’d been had first dressed in this garb. He’d barely fit, and the shape and form had been inflated around him to make up for the gaps in his age. He’d been a _man_ before he’d been grown enough to be one. 

Under Poe’s gaze, he remembered those early days. The strange way he’d navigated the world at a remove. Getting used to feeling things through gloves, or living in a heat of his own making. No more gusts of cold air across his face, no sunlight on his skin. No grass beneath his fingertips, no hotcold on his lips. Even his vision blinkered, pulled straight ahead and filtered through controls. Augmented with technology and the Force, but cast in the pall of his death-mask. He remembered how it had felt to _change_ , how he’d crawled inside his chrysalis and never emerged out the other side. 

He could do this. He could. He could read him, and take the information, and then it would be over. It would be over, and - 

\- his mind blanked at the thought of _what came after_. What came after, logically, was the systematic destruction of the pilot’s mind. Every last secret rattled from his skull before his eventual death or surrender to the Order. But he couldn’t conceive of this, and the thought remained in a bubble, off to one side. The thought was so - it just - he couldn’t -

 _He had known him_.

He had never had to do this to someone with a history, a shared past. But it would be fine. It would be fine because _he_ (the name he would not name) was gone. He’d destroyed him. The boy Poe had known was no more, and so there would be no - there’d - it would be fine. He would be fine. It would be a tool, another hook into the man’s psyche. A hole for his fingers to claw through. It would be good. He would be good.

“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board.” Reduce him down to his role, remove his personhood. Deny their past, make this formal. “You comfortable?” Less sensible. Whiplashing. Focus, Kylo, focus.  


“Not really.”  


The boundary remained up, the professional distance of captor and captive. It made it easier.

“I’m impressed. No one has been able to get out of you what you did with the map.”   


“You might want to rethink your technique.”  


 _What_ , a rebellious thought sprung up. _Offer to wine and dine you_? It was dumb, and he hated himself for thinking it, even as a bad joke. No. Focus. Stay on target, Kylo. **F o c u s**.

Tone empty, voice level, heart removed. “Where is it?” He needed it. He needed to know where _that man_ was. He needed to know where he was, and he needed to bring him back to answer for his crimes. It was essential. Luke Skywalker deserved to be put on trial for his sins.

“The Resistance will not be intimidated by you.”  


Impersonal, again. _Resistance._ As if he **was** the Resistance. Poe was so much more than his job. He was a boy who had once had dreams. He was a boy who had once lost a parent. He was scuffed knees and sticky fingers. He was the bubbly need to get _up_ and into the black. He was hope and fear and many, many more things beside. Kylo knew those old _hims_ , knew he was still there, underneath.

Always still there, underneath. The foundations buried under so much river-silt, the detritus of time covering over the bedrock. But still there, somewhere. Impossible to excise, impossible to refute.

“ _Where is it_?”  


He pushed inside, and tried to think of the _map_ , of **Luke**.

***

He sees himself, but it’s an old self. It’s a memory of a - of _him_. Of - of - _Ben_. He sees himself, but not himself. He can’t connect with the body, with the mind. It’s a memory, a past, a history. A thought, and one external to himself. His skin looks clearer, his frame taller.

Poe looks up to him, even now. Even then. Maybe history distorts their height. Kylo always feels less tall as _Ben_ than this. Or did. Or something.

“I don’t want to go.” His lips move in time with this echo.  


“Luke Skywalker is a powerful Jedi Master,” says Poe. Said. Time. It’s confusing. “He defeated the Emperor.”  


“No. Darth Vader did that.” Petulant, even then. Ten, and full of fire and hate already. How did anyone ever think he had any _Light_ left in him?   


“He will help you. He will… he will help you.”   


Their hands touch, and B- Kylo remembers it. He remembers how it burned to touch, knowing this was it. This was it. This was when he was thrown away like last night’s stew. Unwanted, unpalatable, stale and grisly. He remembers how he’d been terrified of being alone, even with his _uncle_. His _uncle_ was different from the Jedi Master. They were like two people, and Ben was so so so so afraid. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay with his mother, with his friend. 

Two people. Only two people. He’d never been good at making the connections everyone else did, and he still didn’t know why Poe even gave him the time of day. Pity, maybe. 

Ben had wanted to stay, but he couldn’t. He was broken, dark, nasty. He was wicked, cruel, sin. They were sending him away because he was a monster, inside. Not a boy. Even his love - his love of his mother, of his friend - these things were not _right_. He was supposed to give up attachments, as a Jedi. It was why he _hated_ the thought. _Control_. Control. No attachments. No love. No needing his mother in the night when the monsters stalked around his bed (not that he had dared in years. You were supposed to grow out of that, but he hadn’t. He’d just stopped crying, and carried on needing). No friend with their stories and their late nights and shared cookies and jumping from couch to couch and tales of a future. No.

Ben had to go to Luke, and Luke would somehow magically save him from the _voice_ , but now he sees -

…Poe. Poe is hurting, too. Back then he had thought Poe was just too happy at the thought of him as a Jedi (which **Ben did not want to be** ), but now he sees deeper. Sees with adult eyes, or maybe with Poe’s. Rimmed with tears, blinking back. A longing, a loneliness in advance of the separation. A terrible yearning, a loathing for the rule, too, but…

A brave face, a stiff lip, a firm jaw. _Be strong for Ben. You can’t help him. You tried. Maybe Luke will make the shadows go away and then he can come back and you can carry on being friends and he will be amazing but he will be too amazing because why would a Jedi want to be friends with me but it’s okay I love him I want him to be happy and I don’t make him happy and–_

***

Kylo broke the connection, snapped the memory in two. No. _No_. He did _not_ get to do that. “You’re going to tell me, one way or another.”

Poe was panting, his face gleaming with sweat and blood. He could only move so much in the chair, and his dark eyes glared up at him. “Don’t like what you see? Why’s that? Because you know what you became?”

“ _More powerful than you could ever imagine_.”  


***

Inside, again. Map. Map. Map. Luke. Map to Luke. He hammered the thoughts, tried to pull back the scent of fire in the air, the feel of sand below their feet, to drag him where he wanted.

 _Poe, alone_. Young, but older. Looking up an X-Wing, longingly. His hand wants - wanted - wants - to reach out and touch the sleek lines. _Pilot_. A pilot at last. He’d done it. He’d passed. He was finally what he was meant to be.

But Poe wasn’t fully happy, no. He walked around the craft and admired the lines, trying to feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. Trying to feel like his mother was proud of him, but–

_“I’ll be the pilot, you will be the Jedi.”_   


An echo of a conversation, a game played long ago. A flightsuit made out of a sweater and an egg-carton strapped on with string. A lightsaber made out of a long tube of cardboard. Two boys bouncing around and shrieking with delight as they saved the galaxy from the new Emperor, the new villain. 

A wave of pain and loss so palpable that his hand _did_ make contact, did touch the ship, because he might fall if he didn’t.

Ben. Ben.

He remembered when they came to tell him, how he’d been asked to sit. Hands that touched, but he didn’t want them on him.

Words he couldn’t comprehend, didn’t want to.

 _Massacre_.

_Fall._

_Darkness._

His finger slid over something sharp and drew blood, and he pulled it into his mouth and sucked at the wound, automatically. 

Ben. Ben was gone. Ben was gone, and Poe didn’t feel how he should.

He’d failed him.

***

“I will **rip it from you** ,” Kylo spat, eyes furious under his mask. “Do you _enjoy_ this masochism?”  


“Is it masochism, when you’re doing this to me?” Poe asked, his voice broken, heaving. “I’m not going to surrender. You’ll have to break me, kill me. Go on. Do it. DO IT.”  


Kylo did not want to.

***

Masochism. That was what it was. He saw another boy - a young man - a mechanic. Too tall to be a pilot. Taller than Poe, but that wasn’t saying all that much. He was lithe and friendly, his skin a soft peach muslin. Dark hair and eyes, and Kylo wondered if that meant Poe had a _type_. 

And if so, did–

There was a date, and a kiss. He felt Poe’s nerves, the weird sloshing sensation in his gut. The need for something, the worry and the fear. He felt the way the conversation was awkward, and how Poe kept laughing anyway and convincing himself it was fine.

Felt the boy’s lips under Poe’s, and how when Poe tried to kiss him harder, the boy pulled back. He left.

Poe alone.

Poe went back to his room - no. A rented room. He’d wanted to do it. He’d wanted to bring him back, and Kylo realises that Poe had never had sex with another man. He’d mustered up the courage, found someone, tried to woo them, and failed miserably.

Poe lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, aching inside. He palmed over his groin, trying to get hard. Trying to get hard, imagining - imagining a face. A face he’d known, but grown to match his own. Imagining a boy made man. Imagining… _him_.

The pilot’s cock wouldn’t work, wouldn’t respond, and Poe drunkenly rolled over on the bed, punching at the pillow. He’d wanted Ben, or thought he had, or maybe hoped they could find one another. He’d wanted his friend back, and wanted something else, but they’d been kids, and a seventeen year old wasn’t allowed to take advantage of a fifteen year old. Not that Poe _would_. But he’d wanted him back, wanted him to come home, and maybe they could date and–

Kylo saw all those horrible, wicked, nasty fantasies. The ones where they just were together, nothing more. Childish hopes for friendship that never waned. Hands holding under the table, toes kicking toes. A terrible maturity in letting them take his friend away, hoping it would make him happy. A hatred and a loathing he’d shoved to one side because it was _selfish_ , because **Ben** was more important. A disgust with Ben’s family, a worry that they would never be friends again. That Ben would move on, would be a Great Jedi, and Poe would be nothing to him. 

Terrible, horrible dreams of the two of them running away together. A small ship, smaller cargos. Little victories and missions. Kisses in the dark. Innocent dreams growing less so with age, with distance. 

Nightmare dreams of a man in black, but that strange _desire_ all the same. To be found, and caught, and taken. To be loved, all the same. Of running far from everyone with the man, of being safe and secure. Daydreams of saving him, of finding him, of bringing him home. Nightmares of never managing. 

Poe screamed himself to sleep, and Kylo fell back from his mind in shock.

***

Poe was crying. Poe was crying, hot and messy, and Kylo could feel his own grief on his face. Grief for a love long lost, grief for a boy who’d died, and a boy whose heart he’d broken. 

Poe had loved him. He had loved Poe. He had hated to go, but he’d had to. 

He hadn’t been the hero Poe thought he could be. He wasn’t _capable_ of being that boy - that _man_. He was too weak, too broken, too wrong. There was no happy ending for a man like him. Kylo Ren was _wrong._ There was no other way to explain it, he was **wrong**. And even a long-lost potential lover stoked a jealous rage so deep in his gut that he wanted to _smash everything in this room_.

How _dare they walk out on Poe_ , like he’d done? How _dare_ they break his heart? Even if Poe was simply covering over an open wound with a face that would hurt him with false memories? How _dare they even be considered worthy of Poe’s love and how dare they take him from–_

“Stop… please…” two words, low and shattered. “Don’t. Don’t look.”  


“Ben is dead,” Kylo told him. “He’s gone. He was weak. He was weak, and I destroyed him. He’s gone, Poe.”  


“I know, I know, I know. I wanted to be enough to save him, but I couldn’t.” The tears couldn’t be contained any more, and Kylo watched with horror as they streamed down his face. “I wasn’t enough. I wanted to be. I wanted to be.”  


Which… hurt all the more. “No,” he told him. “You were enough. It was me.”

“Come home, Ben. Come _home_.”  


“Ben’s gone.” How many times did he have to tell people he’d killed him? Self-murderer, monster most dire. “I can’t. It’s too late, Poe.”  


“Please, just come home. We’ll forgive you. I’ll forgive you. Just come home with me. You aren’t this thing, you aren’t this monster. I know you.”  


But he didn’t, did he? Not really. The faintest flicker of hope died in his chest. “You don’t know me, Poe. I did these things. I will do more. I will do worse. There is no going back for me. I am… I am too _Dark_ to ever be what you need.”

“I don’t care! I’ll help you! Let’s - let’s - let’s get Luke together. Let’s get him, and he can fix you. Ben, _please_.”  


Luke. The name made his blood cold. “He wasn’t enough to save me back then,” Kylo snarled. “He couldn’t save me now.”

“Please, Ben, I’m begging you.”  


But there was no hope. No hope for him. He had tried the Light, and he had tried the Dark, and he was too broken even for _that_. Everything hurt, and nothing ever made it stop. “Just give me the map.”

“What? So you can kill me and kill Luke?”  


See. Even now. “You know I’m capable of it, so why would you want me to come home?”

“Ben - for Force’s sake - would you _please_ just stop! Stop! Stop fighting. I love you, you idiot. I _love_ you.”  


And the problem was, Kylo loved him, too. But there was no way he could be with Poe. He’d never make his way back from all this sin. His soul was stained in too much blood, his hands muddied and grubbied. He choked on the ache, and wished he could wipe himself from his… from his mind… he…

“Ben?”  


“This is for your own good,” Kylo told him, and ran through his head with all the longing he had as power. The _Dark Side_ was strong with passion, with love, with fear, with anger. He ripped the map from his thoughts, and boxed other things deep down inside. When he left, Poe was panting, and barely still inside his head.  


***

Kylo told Hux about the droid. It was still needed, after all. The General would deal with that. But there was still one loose end, and he had to play this carefully. 

He couldn’t use the personnel tracker, not when his actions would be logged. He had to find the man the hard way. The trooper. The one from the village.

He wanted out, and all it would take would be a little _nudge_ in the right direction, and everybody won.

“ _Lord Ren wants the prisoner_.”   


***

Poe lay on his bunk, back at the base. He’d been patched up, checked over, assessed. His body would heal, and so would his mind. He wasn’t ready for the counselling just yet, though. Soon.

Soon.

He lay on his bunk, and looked up at the ceiling.

People kept asking if he was okay, if he needed anything. He didn’t know why, because he couldn’t remember the thing they all seemed so worried about. He knew he’d been interrogated, even felt the snatch of thought about the _map_ inside his astromech droid. But the rest of it was hazy, like his memories of the man in the room.

He closed his eyes, trying to pick through the fog, trying to work out what had happened. When he did, his attention kept sliding away. It was like the thoughts were greased, or shielded somehow. Like his wheels couldn’t get traction.

He didn’t feel distressed. He felt nothing.

After a while, sleep came. Sleep, and the memories whirled a little stronger.

“ _I’ll get you out of here_.”  


“ _Come home with me, please.”_  


_“I can’t. But I can keep you safe.”  
_

_“Ben, don’t do this–”  
_

_“It’s the only way to protect you, Poe.”  
_

_“Please, don’t leave me! Don’t leave me again. Ben, I can’t–”  
_

Nothingness. He tried to hate the man in the mask, but all he could feel was pity.

In the morning, he looked at his boots for ten minutes straight. He needed to… he needed to…

 _Leave_.

No. 

He needed to find the man who saved his life.

He needed to find the man in the mask. He needed to bring him _home_.


End file.
